Overview
Altınsoy and colleagues measured aluminum, chromium, manganese, cobalt, nickel, copper, arsenic, cadmium, mercury and lead by ICP-MS in 51 retail cheeses of nine types collected in Türkiye in 2025, and estimated intakes and hazard quotients for people over 15 years of age. Table 1 gives median (min to max) per cheese type; overall means are in the abstract and Results text.
Key numbers
- All 51 cheeses, means: arsenic 59 ± 214, lead 0.05 ± 0.09, cadmium 0.005 ± 0.01, mercury 0.02 ± 0.05 µg/kg (Abstract; Results p. 3-4).
- White cheese (n = 12): arsenic median 23.3 µg/kg, maximum 1494 µg/kg (Table 1).
- Kashar cheese: lead median 0.003 µg/kg, maximum 0.38 µg/kg; cadmium was detected only in white cheese, up to 0.06 µg/kg (Table 1; Results p. 4).
Methods (brief)
Microwave digestion of 0.3 g with nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide, ICP-MS (Agilent 7800), triplicate analyses. Recovery was checked by spiking two samples; LOD, LOQ and recoveries are in Supplementary Table 2, which is not available with the PDF. No certified reference material is reported.
Evidence Fitness
A national retail survey with modest numbers per type (4 to 12). Lead, cadmium and mercury results are very low compared with other cheese surveys, and medians below LOQ are printed as 0. Internal inconsistencies: the curd cheese aluminum median exceeds its printed maximum, and the Discussion claims 29% of cheeses exceeded a 10 µg/kg mercury limit although the highest printed mercury value is 0.32 µg/kg. Arsenic is total arsenic. Ripened and fresh cheeses are a proxy only for fromage-frais, cheese-pizza, cheese-crackers, macaroni-and-cheese, broccoli-cheese-soup and ranch-dressing-low-calorie; those pages are not linked.